I am going to take it for granted that, since you’ve opted to read this article, you care about the arts. I’m also going to save time and typing by assuming that you appreciate media coverage of the arts and that you realize that without the attention of the media, it will be ever harder for the arts to share their news, their work and their value locally, nationally and internationally.

Since we are agreed, I will proceed directly to my point.

If you want to see intelligent, comprehensive coverage of the arts – features and reviews alike – then you’ve got to start clicking. Journalism is well on its way to being a numbers game for most outlets. How many people clicked on a story or video, how many times was it liked or shared, how much time was spent looking at it? We are already seeing journalism sites paying writers base salaries with bumps or bonuses based on online metrics; outlets say they are dropping certain types of coverage because it’s simply not generating enough traffic. It’s not enough to be happy that arts coverage exists, you have to actually engage with it to insure its survival and the job survival of those who create it.

Clicks mean eyes and eyes mean advertisers. As print becomes an ever-harder sell, online advertising grows ever more important to outlets. Even back in the days pre-internet, I encountered cuts in arts coverage because the arts didn’t generate enough advertising revenue (whereas advertisers loved sports sections and we get regular features about new cars because auto dealers buy big ads). Even now, arts spending online is a small sliver of online advertising, so our best means of supporting arts coverage is by actually reading it.

Let’s face it: anyone with a WordPress blog knows how many people read each piece they post (yes, I’m watching you). But that’s amateur hour compared to the realtime and cumulative algorithms and analytics applied at big media outlets. There are teams of people looking at clicks, links and likes for every story, and media empires are being built on click-bait methodology (why, hello BuzzFeed). It’s running the show in many places and it can’t be ignored.

So here’s what I propose. Every morning, when you get online, go to the arts section of your local media outlets, seek out their arts and entertainment stories, and click of them. Don’t click on each in rapid succession, but spend 30 to 45 seconds on each one (remember your multiple browser windows). You have to wait a bit because one analytic is stickiness or hang-time or whatever it’s called now, namely whether people are really engaging with coverage. A click on and immediate click off looks like you got there by mistake. And needless to say, it certainly won’t hurt in the least if you actually read a story or watch a video while you’re at it.

I should also note that just liking or retweeting a story isn’t enough: you actually have to look at it. Sometimes you’re just liking a friend posting about a story, not the story or video itself, and that’s an important difference. There have been studies that show that many people retweet items without ever actually reading them, and anecdotally I know that to be true: I often see my own tweets with embedded links that have more retweets than clicks. You’ve got to stop and look. That said, on Facebook likes and shares feed into an algorithm that’s sure more people might see the post featured in their feed, and retweets do the same, so be liberal with those too.

You need to share this idea with your staffs, your audience, your donors. This can’t be an effort by a couple of thousand core die-hards; this has to be a movement and it has to be sustained. I do my part every day in curating the articles I share on my twitter feed. You don’t need to be as exhaustive as I am, but whether you seek out a story or if it comes across your social media feed, click on it (often click on opera and symphony stories even though I rarely attend them). If the arts generate eyes, if they generate numbers, you’re going to have a direct impact on how the arts are viewed by the media decision makers. Clicking on the occasional ad next to an arts story matters too.

I’d like to give this idea some snappy name that the field can adopt, but I’m only coming up with corny and possibly inexplicable ideas like “Click 10 For The Arts,” which in my mind is shorthand for remind you to click on 10 arts stories daily. I hope that if people buy into this idea, someone will come up with something clever.

But unlike the world of journalism 25 years ago, where outlets only knew how many papers they sold, it’s now exceedingly easy to know what gets traffic and what doesn’t. No need for audience surveys when our every move online is recorded. If we don’t actively work to pump up the stats for arts coverage, it’ll continue to erode.

To quote Joni Mitchell, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone,” and we’ve lost too much already. So next time you want to take a quiz about what Shakespeare villain or what Sondheim character you are, at least spend the equivalent amount of time reading articles about Shakespeare plays or Sondheim shows. Because while the former may be fun, it’s the latter that will actually sustain arts journalism and sustain the arts.

P.S. Thanks for clicking on this story. Now would you be so kind to like it, favorite it, share it, retweet it and so on? And yes, I’ll know if you did.

While the arts are often notoriously slow adopters of new technology, the rapid rise of social media would seem to dictate that commercial theatre jump on the bandwagon and hold on tight.

But social media may be best suited for use by subsidised companies, rather than the shows that populate the West End and Broadway.

Certainly, every show has the basics in place, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and so on, in addition to the now de rigeur website. But producers and their marketing teams seem to view most social media as an extension of advertising or PR, feeding out casting announcements, special ticket offers and ‘exclusive’ photos and video all directed at driving sales.

The problem is that for most productions, especially early in their runs, there aren’t necessarily enough people who have followed or liked the show to read what’s on offer, and the content is often repurposed for other uses, diluting the impact that ‘exclusivity’ might still carry.

Shows appear drawn to the media portion of this new manner of communications, when it is the social aspect that is most innovative and compelling. Social platforms offer rapid and direct communications with individuals, but the fact is that people engage most with those who actually engage with, or entertain, them. It may take place on an overwhelming scale when it comes to major celebrities, but in the theatre, it’s quite easy for fans to strike up conversations with stars, writers, designers, directors and even critics – something virtually unimaginable a decade ago. So, if shows don’t actually engage with their audiences beyond tarted-up press announcements, they’re dropping the ball.

Of course, the challenge is how creative on an ongoing basis any one show can be, since they’re a relatively fixed offering (people, on the other hand, can have remarkably varied day-to-day lives) and how much  they’re willing to invest to be socially rather than sales-oriented, focusing on the long game rather than immediate gain. Except for a very small portion of the audience,  attendance at a commercial show is a one-off event, not an ongoing commitment, seemingly at odds with the basis of social media. The building of relationships afforded by social media can create a stronger bond for an ongoing company producing an array of works over months or years.

In 2009, when social media was still working its way into public consciousness, the Broadway production of Next to Normal garnered great attention and achieved a remarkable million followers through two initiatives. It offered one night “live-tweeting” the plot of the entire show for anyone who cared to follow. Shorn of songs and even most dialogue, they were serialising an outline in real time, but it was a distinctive effort that marked the show as creative and tantalised people with the framework of a show they might then choose to see in real life.

Next to Normal also ran a campaign in which Twitter followers were encouraged to make suggestions for a new song for the show, creating a connection directly with the authors, who did indeed write a song based on suggestions. While it wasn’t added to the finished work, fans could hear it online. It’s a shame that, since the account still has 946,000 following (though it is closed), it hasn’t tweeted since April of last year, leaving a huge untapped base of potential ticket buyers for other productions.

Despite the efforts and success of Next to Normal, social media still seems an afterthought for most Broadway shows. In a survey of Broadway theatres in early May, prompts to interact with the show through social media activity (primarily Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) were on display at 15 theatres – yet a nearly equal number (14) had no such reminders in their front of theatre or box office lobby displays (a number of theatres had no tenants at the time). A few showed real initiative in advocating social media use (a photo backdrop outside the Lunt-Fontanne for Motown; a ‘photo stop’ in the upper lobby of the Gershwin for Wicked).

Unfortunately, others simply displayed social platform logos without the specific names used by the shows in those arenas, so one would have to seek them out; it’s akin to posting ‘we have a website’ instead of giving a URL.

If productions don’t feel that social media gives them sufficient bang for their buck, perhaps they shouldn’t establish a presence only to give it short shrift. On the other hand, as some shows are demonstrating, with a little thought, a show can build its profile at a proportionately low cost, amplifying the power of the ever essential word of mouth, so long as they’re willing to commit to subtly promoting their presence by offering intriguing content and damping down the urge to shout “BUY NOW”.